Italy Poised to Overtake Greece as Eurozone's Most Indebted Country with Debt at 138.6%

Greece will cease to be the eurozone's most indebted country starting this year, as its public debt falls below Italy's, Reuters reported on April 25. Two senior officials revealed that Greece's debt is expected to decline to approximately 137% of GDP this year, down from 145.9% in 2025. Meanwhile, Italy's debt is forecast to peak at 138.6% in 2026, rising 1.5 percentage points from 137.1% of GDP in 2025, under the Treasury's multi-year budget plan released this week. Sources indicate that starting this year, Greece will no longer be the eurozone's most indebted country. The revised Greek debt ratio will be included in the country's multi-year fiscal plan to be submitted to the European Commission by month's end.

Italy's budget plan shows that Italian public debt will stabilize at approximately 138.5% in 2027 before declining to 137.9% in 2028 and 136.3% in 2029. Greece's public debt, the highest in the eurozone over the past two decades, has declined by more than 60 percentage points to 145.9% of GDP in 2025 from a peak of 209.4% in 2020. Italy's debt, meanwhile, has declined by approximately 17 percentage points during the same period.

Greece, recovering from a financial crisis lasting over a decade, has received three rounds of financial assistance totaling approximately 280 billion euros (over 10.6 trillion baht) and plans to repay approximately 7 billion euros from the first financial assistance package this year. Italy, on the other hand, has experienced economic growth below 1% consecutively for three years from 2023 to 2025, despite receiving billions of euros from the EU fund for economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Treasury's budget plan indicates this trend will continue through 2029.

In contrast, Greece's economy has grown consistently at more than 2% over the past three years, higher than the average for EU nations, driven by investment, domestic demand, and tourism.